Mental Shortcuts

Running Head : MENTAL SHORTCUTS

Analysis of Mental Shortcuts (Name (Institution /School (Professor (Subject Analysis of Mental Shortcuts

Being creatures gifted with reason , people are always thinking and trying to rationalize things .For each person and situation , there are different kinds of ways of thinking or mental shortcuts . One of them is Representativeness heuristic . This refers to the way a person thinks according to his insticnts and past experiences . Unlike other modes of thinking , representativeness heuristic consumes less time . It does not involve much cognitive activity . In this mode of thinking , people

tend to refer to the past for decision making and judgment of occurences or events (Akent et al , 2007

Another type of type of heuristic is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic . This type of heuristic greatly relies on an anchor or initial opinion or thought about a certain object , place , or situation . Despite having other evidence before the judgment , the judgment and the trail of thought of the person remains to be hanging on to the initial thought Unlike representativeness heuristic , this mode of thinking is slower in that more opinions are gathere before a decision is made and the rationalization concluded (Akent et al , 2007

The third kind of heuristic is the availability heuristic . This type of heuristic make use of examples for making a decision or judging an event or occurence . In addition , availability heuristic the frequency of an event may be predicted through the said example . As compared to the first two kinds of heuristic , this...